Standing Force Generation & Training

Tiglath-Pileser III replaced seasonal militia levies with professional soldiers paid for their service, supplemented by foreign mercenaries and vassal contingents. The resulting force was the most sophisticated administrative and economic institution of its time and became the engine of an Assyrian economy built on warfare.

Whereas the Eastern Zhou relied on militias drafted from around 150 city-states, Jin established a permanent force in 678 BC. It marks the beginning of standing force generation in the Chinese states system.

For a three-year period the city-state of Argos kept a permanent body of a thousand hoplites under arms. It is one of the rare documented Greek standing infantry formations outside the militia norm.

Thebes created a permanent corps of three hundred picked hoplites in 378 BC, which endured until its destruction in 338 BC. It represented an early Greek experiment in holding an elite professional unit at continuous readiness.

During his reign Philip II converted the ancient Macedonian army into a permanent force whose troops were paid throughout the year rather than mustered seasonally. This professionalised instrument underpinned the conquests subsequently led by his son Alexander the Great.

With the founding of Imperial China in 221 BC, the Qin fought wars with trained vocational soldiers rather than temporary levies. The shift institutionalised permanent military service as a function of the unified imperial state.

Against the general Greek pattern of citizen militia, Athens established a paid standing cavalry arm in the 440s BC, which by the late 430s comprised 1,000 heavy cavalry and 200 horse archers. It shows that even in the militia-dominated city-state world, specialised permanent branches could be sustained.

Sultan Murad I created the Janissary corps in the fourteenth century, a permanent professional infantry maintained by the state. They are regarded as the first modern standing army in medieval Europe and set a benchmark other powers measured themselves against.

From the 1420s Hungary kept permanent troops garrisoning its frontier fortifications, predating its first standing field army. This shows permanent force-holding emerging first in static defensive roles.

During the Hundred Years' War Charles VII issued ordonnances governing the length of service, composition and payment of units, replacing feudal levies with troops on regular wages. These companies formed the core of the French gendarmes that dominated European battlefields in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and were stationed across France for assembly when needed.

Founded in 1462, the Black Army was the first standing field army in that part of Europe, combining infantry, artillery and light and heavy cavalry. Matthias equipped roughly every fourth soldier with an arquebus, an unusually high ratio limited only by the cost of gunpowder.

In the 1480s French militia 'bandes' were amalgamated into temporary legions of up to 9,000 men, with Swiss instructors engaged to train them. Contracting, paying and training these men moved provincial militia towards permanent professional status.

At the Battle of Bladensburg American militiamen from Maryland and Virginia were routed by British regulars. Madison remarked that he could never have believed so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force, a turning point in American arguments for professional standing forces.

Distrustful of a standing army not under civilian control, the Framers reserved financial control to Congress under Article 1, Section 8, while leaving the President as commander-in-chief. Elbridge Gerry argued against a large standing army at the 1787 convention, and the appointment and promotion of senior officers was made subject to Senate confirmation.

Fearing the growth of royal power, Parliament sharply reduced the army in 1698 after its wartime expansion. The episode established the recurring tension between standing force readiness and constitutional suspicion of permanent armies.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Parliament asserted statutory control over the standing army. Under William III the force was then enlarged to 94,000 men by 1694, demonstrating that civilian control and expansion could proceed together.

In January 1661 Charles II established a permanent royal army, into which many veterans of the disbanded New Model Army enlisted. By 1688 it numbered over 34,000 men, making peacetime professional forces a fixture of English statecraft.

Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Parliament dissolved the New Model Army. The disbandment reflected enduring political hostility to a peacetime standing force.

During the First English Civil War Parliament created the New Model Army, breaking with England's prior reliance on militia, conscripts, volunteers and mercenaries. It was England's first large standing force and reached some 50,000 men.

The English term 'standing army' dates from approximately 1603, denoting a permanent, often professional force of full-time soldiers. The phenomenon it describes is far older, but the naming marks the point at which permanent forces became a distinct political and administrative category.

The pike-and-shot tercios assured Spanish predominance on European battlefields from the sixteenth century into the first half of the seventeenth. Other powers copied the formation but could not match the edge given by Spain's core of permanent professionals.

Facing pressure from Poland and Sweden in the west and the Tatar khanates in the east, Ivan centralised state power and reformed the army. The streltsy gave Russia its first permanent force after centuries of isolation from Central and Western European military development.

Askia Mohammad I separated the civilian population from the army, unlike his predecessor Sunni Ali under whom everyone was a soldier, according to the chronicler Al-Sa'di. The resulting permanent corps of 40,000 was a distinguishing feature of Songhai power in West Africa.